Products

Topics

FCC Aims to Subsidize Internet Service for the Poor

The agency wants to expand its Lifeline subsidy, which is derisively referred to as the “Obamaphone” program.

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 12: FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn testifies before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation during an FCC oversight hearing on March 12, 2013 in Washington, DC. FCC members warned that a planned 2014 incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum for mobile broadband use could encounter setbacks.

The Fed­er­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Com­mis­sion plans to soon be­gin work­ing on a pro­pos­al to sub­sid­ize In­ter­net ser­vice for low-in­come con­sumers by ex­pand­ing its Life­line pro­gram, which is mocked by con­ser­vat­ives as the “Obama­phone” pro­gram.

All three Demo­crats on the five-mem­ber com­mis­sion have pub­licly said they want to use fed­er­al money to help en­sure that all Amer­ic­ans can af­ford to get on­line. Life­line—which des­pite the Obama­phone nick­name was cre­ated dur­ing the Re­agan ad­min­is­tra­tion—cur­rently sub­sid­izes only phone ser­vice.

“The Life­line pro­gram, es­tab­lished in the mid ‘80s, has been stuck in the mid ‘80s,” Demo­crat­ic FCC Com­mis­sion­er Mignon Cly­burn told Na­tion­al Journ­al dur­ing an in­ter­view Wed­nes­day on C-SPAN’s The Com­mu­nic­at­ors. Cly­burn said she is hop­ing the agency will un­veil a pro­pos­al by this sum­mer to ex­pand the pro­gram to cov­er In­ter­net ac­cess.

Life­line sub­sid­izes about $10 of phone ser­vice per month for qual­i­fy­ing con­sumers. Un­der Cly­burn’s plan, that amount wouldn’t ne­ces­sar­ily in­crease, but con­sumers could choose to have it cov­er the data on their smart­phone or their home broad­band con­nec­tion.

FCC Chair­man Tom Wheel­er in­dic­ated at a pub­lic meet­ing last Decem­ber he agrees that Life­line should cov­er In­ter­net costs, and Jes­sica Rosen­wor­cel, the oth­er Demo­crat­ic com­mis­sion­er, is par­tic­u­larly fo­cused on en­sur­ing that chil­dren from poor fam­il­ies have In­ter­net ac­cess at home so they can do their on­line home­work.

But sub­sid­iz­ing broad­band ac­cess for the poor has the po­ten­tial to ex­plode in­to an­oth­er par­tis­an con­tro­versy. The money for Life­line comes from gov­ern­ment fees on con­sumers’ monthly phone bills, and con­ser­vat­ives have de­cried the pro­gram as a waste­ful gov­ern­ment handout.

Last Con­gress, 67 House Re­pub­lic­ans co-sponsored a bill that would have curbed the pro­gram to only cov­er land­line phones, and 44 House Re­pub­lic­ans signed a let­ter call­ing for the pro­gram to be scrapped al­to­geth­er. “Obama­phone wel­fare sym­bol­izes how the cul­ture of gov­ern­ment de­pend­ency is weak­en­ing Amer­ica,” Rep. Mar­sha Black­burn of Ten­ness­ee said at the time.

Even sup­port­ers of the $1.7 bil­lion pro­gram ad­mit that it has been plagued by fraud and ab­use. The FCC and the Justice De­part­ment have tried to crack down in re­cent years on com­pan­ies scam­ming the pro­gram.

Dur­ing the C-SPAN in­ter­view, Cly­burn ar­gued that the FCC should over­haul the pro­gram so that the phone and In­ter­net pro­viders aren’t the ones re­spons­ible for de­term­in­ing if cus­tom­ers are eli­gible for the sub­sidies. That sys­tem en­cour­ages the com­pan­ies to lie to re­ceive more sub­sidies, she ar­gued.

“This pro­gram is lit­er­ally what it says,” she said. “It is a life­line, an op­por­tun­ity for those who have sig­ni­fic­ant fin­an­cial chal­lenges to be able to keep in touch with their doc­tors, with their edu­cat­ors, with their com­munit­ies, with their loved ones. And it is vi­tal that we re­form that to meet the cur­rent needs of our most vul­ner­able cit­izens.”

She said she be­lieves it’s pos­sible to cov­er broad­band ser­vice without in­creas­ing the over­all size of the pro­gram—which would avoid in­creas­ing the fees on con­sumers’ phone bills.

There is some hope that over­haul­ing Life­line could be a bi­par­tis­an is­sue. Mi­chael O’Ri­elly, one of the two Re­pub­lic­an FCC com­mis­sion­ers, out­lined his own plan last month for up­dat­ing the pro­gram to in­clude broad­band. He would also im­pose a vari­ety of re­straints and over­sight mech­an­isms to keep down costs.

But in the wake of the bit­terly par­tis­an fight over net neut­ral­ity, there might not be much good­will left between the FCC’s Demo­crats and Re­pub­lic­ans.

"The Senate passed a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill on Tuesday night, handing a significant victory to President Trump and senators who lobbied to advance the legislation before the end of the year. Senators voted 87-12 on the legislation, which merges a House-passed prison reform bill aimed at reducing recidivism with a handful of changes to sentencing laws and mandatory minimum prison sentences." The House aims to vote on the measure when it reconvenes later this week.

Source:

"EKE OUT" MORE COOPERATION

Judge Delays Flynn Sentencing

12 hours ago

THE LATEST

Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan "agreed Tuesday to postpone Michael Flynn’s sentencing after a hearing to decide the punishment for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser went awry." Sullivan gave Flynn a chance to reconsider his decision to plead guilty, adding that he could not "guarantee a sentence without prison time, even after the special counsel’s office recommended that Flynn not be incarcerated. After a brief recess, Sullivan and prosecutors agreed to delay sentencing so that Flynn could "eke out the last modicum of cooperation."